Subway - Back to School - Parfait - (2011) - :30 (USA)

In contrast to Notebook, Parfait is food-focused, and meant to feature photography of Subway's new all-day Parfait offering. Charlex focused on creating bookends for the edit, that stress the fresh ingredients used by including images of a farm, shot in a hyper-real style. Bernardez built a visual language that would stand out from the crowd but still mesh with the food photography. Ultimately, the inspiration came from old food labels and the landscape works of American painter, Grant Wood. "His paintings are beautifully lit with amazing colors, and I loved how well they worked within our creative brief," adds Bernardez, who used the images as a springboard.

He began to build a real-life miniature set with Dunn using a photo-collage mock-up, "in order to get the flow of how it would all look," says Bernardez. "Real food is very tricky to do in 3D," he notes. "So we had to shoot live-action food and use that to influence the rest of the world we extended in CG."

"And with our great CG department at Charlex," Dunn interjects, "we knew we could pull off the effect and create a seamless bridge between our miniature set and the VFX signs and backgrounds."

The end result is an opening shot borne of photography and CG. Bernardez muses, "The client liked the first five seconds of their spot so much that we made it six." The spot ends with a similar-looking outro, and there are also supers — designed to match the style of the bookends — that complete the look.

Client: Subway
Spot Title(s): Back to School: Notebook, Parfait
Air Date: August 2011

Agency: MMB Boston
ACD, Art Director: Chris Poulin
ACD, Copywriter: George Goetz
Art Director: Jen Campbell
Copywriter: Liz Giuggio
Director of Broadcast: Sara Ventetuolo

Production Co.: Charlex
Post Co.: Charlex
Director: Ryan Dunn
Creative Director: Manny Bernardez
Senior Producer: Alex Jarman
Art Director & Lead Designer: Masayoshi Nakamura (Notebook)
2D Compositor: Navid Bagherzadeh (Notebook)
2D Animator(s): Elena Wen, Lucas Borras (Notebook)
Smoke Editor: Mike Mendizabal (Parfait)
Flame Artist: John Yu (Parfait)
Senior Designer: Chisa Yagi (Parfait)
Lead Lighter: James Fisher (Parfait)
Additional Lighter(s): Salar Saleh, Frank Grecco, Keith McMenamy, Will Atkins (Parfait)
Lead Modeler: Alex Cheparev (Parfait)
Additional Modeler(s): Hung Ma, Chin Lee (Parfait)
Lead Rigger: Steve Mann (Parfait)
Additional Rigger: Andre Stuppert (Parfait)
Lead CG Animator: Tony Tabtong (Parfait)
CG Supervisor: Keith McCabe (Parfait)
Supervising Producer: Lori Fechter
ECD: Alex Weil
EP: Meredith Machial